I’m an Apple fanatic. I have everything Apple. I won’t list all of my Apple possessions here because I don’t want you to think that I’m showing off.
Last month, my husband and I got into an Apple discussion at the breakfast table. He tells me that, in 3 years, Apple is history. The company will be around but it will not be in the top slot and will only be a shadow of what it was a year ago before Steve Jobs’ death. I tell him that Apple will continue to launch incredible products and leave the competition far behind.
Normally, when Apple launches a new product that interests me (and far too many do) I’m one of the early adopters. No, I do not wake up early or camp out overnight in front of an Apple store, but I usually buy it within 3 months. However, even though I like my tech small and light (I’m thinking of switching from an Air 13″ to an Air 11″) and Christmas is coming, the iPhone 5 and iPad mini were launched recently and I am not rushing to buy either one.
Besides this, a couple of days ago, I met a friend for dinner who just got a Samsung Galaxy phone. I kept touching it the whole evening (the phone, that is). I found it so light, so thin! My iPhone 4S looked clunky next to it. Then there was the display, gorgeous. I will not admit this to my husband, but for the first time since I got my first iPhone, I could see myself buying a Galaxy phone.
What’s happening? Am I sick or is Apple losing its touch? I’m definitely not sick. I will not buy an iPad mini because I know that Apple can make iPads with Retina Display. How can Apple launch a new iPad without it?. I’ll keep my iPad 2 until the mini’s display evolves. As for the phone, I don’t need a longer phone, I need want a thinner, even a slightly wider, one. You know, like the Galaxy.
But that’s not all. Ever since I downloaded iTunes 11 I don’t understand what Apple has done with the TV shows UI in “Library” mode. In fact, I’m now convinced that iTunes 11 was mainly reworked for music and that no one on that team ever watched TV shows downloaded from Apple. In the past, a blue bubble sat on the left of the TV episode title, if you had not watched the show. Now, sometimes you get the bubble, most times you don’t. Sometimes, the bubble is half-blue, half-white even if you have watched the entire episode. Sometimes the episode recap is bright, and sometimes it’s muted, again, regardless of whether you have watched the episode or not.
It’s probably a bug that they haven’t gotten around to fixing but, frankly, it’s bugging the you-know-what out of me. But what bugs me even more is that when I think of all these things, plus the “maps” fiasco (Australian police issues warning against using Apple Maps), I wonder if my husband is right. Apple seems to be a bit lost, both in software and in hardware.
If I, an Apple fanatic (a MacAddict), am starting to think this way about Apple, “normal” consumers will simply not stick around. I hope that Apple rebounds stronger than ever from all this. If it doesn’t, I’ll lose my bet with my husband and, instead of him buying me an Apple product of my choice, I’ll have to buy him a tech item of his choice, and it will certainly not be an Apple. The thought is driving me bananas.
